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Working together!

New sixth form to build close links

Planning has begun in earnest for the potential opening of a new Sixth Form at Cambourne Village College from September 2023.

This will happen next year as long as we receive final confirmation from developers and planners that the necessary new facilities can clearly be completed within the required time frame. Fundamental to the approach taken with the new Cambourne Sixth Form will be a close partnership with Comberton Sixth Form. This is important and makes a great deal of good sense, because of the relative geographical proximity of the two Sixth Forms. It can mean that students at both Sixth Forms can benefit as the provision at both Sixth Forms can potentially be available to students regardless of which Sixth Form is attended. This will build on, and take much further, some of the partnership work that has been in place this school year between St Peter’s and Comberton Sixth Forms, enabling some courses to be accessed by students at St Peter’s that are run out of Comberton. Effective IT use, partly enabled through lessons learnt about this through the pandemic, has enabled this to take place.

PARTNERSHIP LEAD: Shelley Desborough (right). PREPARING FOR A SIXTH FORM: The first phase of building designed originally as a sixth form is set to be extended before the post-16 facilities open.

Primary partnership to realise mutual benefits

One of the fundamental purposes of having a Trust of schools is to gain benefit from working in close partnership and collaboration with each other. We are all better off by doing this compared to each school ploughing its own furrow. Some of the Trust’s primary schools are beginning to work in particularly close partnership to realise mutual benefits. The West Villages Partnership (made up of Offord, Everton Heath and Gamlingay Primary Schools) has recently confirmed the appointment of a Partnership Head, Shelley Desborough, who will help to lead the three schools into a much closer way of working that allows staffing capacity and expertise together with other resources to be shared effectively across the schools. Moving forward, the Trust is looking to work with both Hartford Infant and Preschool and Hartford Junior School to support more integrated working between the two schools to ensure the best possible use of resources and a seamless educational experience for pupils who progress through these schools. Focus on environment

The power of IT

The Trust now has a section clearly identified in its development plan named as ‘Demonstrate proactive leadership in the area of sustainability and the environment’. Across all our schools we recognise the fundamental importance of environmental education for all pupils and seeking to make all our facilities as environmentally friendly as possible. A member of the Trust Board now has a named responsibility in this area. The Ground Source Heat Pump project at Comberton Village College continues to progress and remains on schedule. The project has quite rightly attracted considerable press and media interest given its scale and significance. The plan is that by the end of September, the school will be able to move over to ground source energy for its heating and no longer have to use oil for this. The benefits of this on several fronts are very clear. The Trust has funded some development work from staff in the area of environmental education. We hope that this can help to support and encourage further developments in environmental education for pupils in all schools in the Trust. The Trust’s IT strategy pre-dates the pandemic. We have held a view for some time that it is crucial that we seek appropriately to harness the power of IT to strengthen the education process in our schools as well as to ease and improve administrative functions. The pandemic accelerated this process and enabled school communities to be much clearer and more confident in the various possibilities. Several of our schools have significantly developed the use of personal IT devices (iPads) during this school year. This has been aided by the Department for Education’s scheme in providing devices for schools. Schools also purchased iPads and devices have been rolled out using a financial package for families to make them as affordable as possible. The Trust is also providing iPads for staff in some schools . We hope this rollout will strengthen learning and improve access to educational resources for all pupils. We also want to continue to look to develop further possible uses of IT where appropriate. For example, we are interested in the possibility of piloting the use of Apple watches to strengthen Physical Education possibilities.